Bats In The Belfry Quotes

And I’m the only bat in this belfry?

Witch Mildred was invited to the wondrous Witches’ Wobble, a Halloween festivity where witches go to gobble. Her snakeskin invitation read: Feasting Starts at Eight! A Grand Buffet (with Skunk Filet!) Hopping on her broomstick, She took off from a thicket. She raced along the back roads to dodge a speeding ticket. A skeleton soon hailed her. (His bones could use some meat!) He pled, “Please! I’m so hungry, I rattle head to feet.” A jack-o’-lantern hollered, “Please take me from this wall, for some, I dread, might use my head as a soccer ball.” Soon the three encountered a ghost who was in tears. “Please take me from this graveyard. It’s much too spooky here.” A shaky, quaky mummy called, “I’m ready to collapse. Please find me a warm hearthside, for I forgot my wraps!” A bat swooped down upon them. He squeaked, “Please wait for me! I’ll go batty when the sexton bongs the bells in my belfry.” A black cat yowled, “Please take me. I need some company, for when I cross their pathways, people run from me!

You may have bats in your belfry but I am more concerned by what may be buried in your cellar.

said the stockbroker faintly. “I’ve fairly put my own neck into a halter.” “With outside assistance, so you assure me,” replied Macdonald. “It’s up to you to get yourself out of it—and believe me, the police system in this country does not aim at charging a man if it is possible to prove he is innocent.

Arrived at Scotland Yard, feeling very conspicuous and more than a bit of a fool, Elizabeth asked the uniformed man at the entrance how she should set about finding Chief Inspector Macdonald, and was surprised to find herself led, without further question, through corridors and up stairs in a building which reminded her of a tax-collector’s office which had got confused with the County Hall. Nothing sensational, she decided, and policemen without their lids looked rather like lambs.

Very good, Weller. I should like to see your mistress.” The butler cocked an eyebrow. “Madam is in her bath, sir. I’m afraid you may have to wait some time.” This was a facer. To wait while Mrs. Attleton completed her toilet was no part of Macdonald’s programme. Still with the same air of respectful helpfulness the butler added: “If you would step into the telephone cabinet, sir, I could put you through to her. There is a phone in her bathroom.” “Live and learn,” thought Macdonald.

Elizabeth felt a sudden disposition to cry. She had not had any affection for Bruce Attleton; had, in fact, resented the whim which had made her father put her into Attleton’s charge, but now she began to remember the way in which he had been kind to her. It was Bruce who had insisted on Elizabeth coming to live with himself and his wife, instead of living in a club or hostel as she had suggested, and he had done his best in many ways to see that she had had a good time, and even done what he could to teach her to read, to appreciate literature and despise trash, to listen to music as well as to jazz, and to speak English instead of schoolgirl slang. Alone in the room which had been peculiarly his, Elizabeth visualised his tall figure and dark head, with the black forelock he tossed back from his high forehead, and was sorry that she had disliked him.

I want to know who knocked Mr. Grenville down, too.” “So do I!” said Elizabeth trenchantly. “He was a goop! Fancy going to the beastly place!” “He certainly was a goop,” agreed Macdonald,

It’s Okey-Dokey to play the Hokey Pokey in Cahokia Poem You cannot play the Oompa-pah in Galaxy Andromeda. You cannot do the Can-can in Afghanistan. You cannot play ping-pong while sounding a gong. You cannot tick a tock when your name’s Mum to tick-a-lock. Gainsay or naysay to play the Cha-Cha in Panama. Nix beatnik tricks playing Second Fiddle doing a Paradiddle. Try not to play off-key when you know you have bats in your belfry. But it is Okey-Dokey to play the Hokey Pokey in Cahokia. --Poems that Will Never See the Light of Day, vol. I

I like detective stories myself, they make me laugh, whereas real crime isn’t funny,

got the handcuffs on his prostrate victim, having told him what he thought of him in language more forceful than academic.

the other sat with his face in his hands. Looking up at the stern-faced man beside him, Mr. Burroughs shuddered weakly. “Is this a nightmare?” he asked. “No. It’s very grim reality,” retorted Macdonald. “This is a police station, and I am an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department working on a case of murder. It’s better for you to remember it.

You’re one of that kind, are you?” said Fuller disgustedly. “You first kick another chap in the middle, and then offer him a bribe to get off. Well, you’ve made a little mistake this time. Bates” (this to the constable) “I’m detailed to stop here. You’d better whistle up your point-mate at the next corner and tell him to take over your beat till you return. Report to the superintendent that the man you’ve got in charge was arrested for suspicious behaviour attempting to enter the Belfry, and that he attacked the officer in charge in attempting to escape. And you can keep your explanation for my superior officers, sir,” he ended up in his best manner.

Mr. Attleton’s way of life—not what you’d call regular, sir—and yet it’s all against his interests to have an open break with Mrs. Attleton. He liked his comfort, sir. Good service, good food, a good club, Turkish baths, swimming, fencing, motoring and all. Mr. Attleton’s a very pleasant gentleman to work for, appreciates good service, and is generous when he’s in funds, but if anything isn’t just so, he’ll not put up with it. If his linen sheets aren’t always the same quality, his bath water as hot as he likes it, his bath salts just so, he mentions it. Likes good living, as I say, sir, but who pays for the linen, and the heating, and the service, in this house, sir? Not Mr. Attleton.” Macdonald nodded his appreciation of this really oratorical effort on the part of Weller,

A bit barmy, if you ask me—bats in the belfry—you know.” Barbara inquired with interest what kind of bats inhabited her ladyship’s belfry. “Oh well!” said the young man. “I suppose I shouldn’t say, really. It’s rather unprofessional, you know; but I don’t see what harm could come of telling you. Her bats is making wills, and it’s a pretty expensive kind of bats—not that that matters to her ladyship. She’s forever quarrelling with her relations, and then down she comes to us, and out comes her will to be altered. Keeps us busy, I can tell you.

Elimination” is a byword at the Yard. If you can’t find where a man—or woman has gone, you can sometimes find out where they have not gone.

She blinked. “You’re worried about me?” He looked at her like she’d completely gone insane. “Yes. One of us has to worry about you. You’re crazy. Nuttier than a fucking fruitcake. You’ve got bats in the belfry. You’re off the wall. Around the bend.” He sucked in air. “Or in the vernacular of the day, you’re fucking cray cray.

He shakes the bats out of his belfry, opens the door, and finds the cutest couple in Los Angeles standing in his doorway.

I suppose the policeman grows to resemble the famous parent at school—their kids are always unusual kids, and want careful handling.

This is where I examine his effects, as the lawyers say.” “Well, I wish you luck. Rather you than me. Thames mud isn’t too savoury.

Now then, looking at this, and speaking as one optimist to another, do you think he could have cracked his own skull by being over-enthusiastic in staging an accident?” The doctor took the “cosh” with an amused smile. “Want me to try it out on myself? Speaking as one fool to another, which is what you were thinking of saying, I should say not. More in your line than mine, this. Oh, I see. Rubber loops. Quite a nice rebound. Of course, you could hit yourself, if you were a fakir or a contortionist. Try it on yourself, laddie. I’m here to attend to the lesions. You won’t get pneumonia, otherwise, ceteris paribus... Come along, put some spunk into it! Scotland for ever. I’ve met your scrum half, and he wasn’t half so careful of himself as you’re being.” “Deuce take it,” said Macdonald, “if I really try to hit the back of my own head—so,” and he bent his long head well forward, “I can’t regulate the blow. I don’t want to be laid out just now—but there is a possibility.” The surgeon had succumbed to mirth. He laughed till he shook. “Pity there isn’t a movie merchant at hand,” he spluttered. “Nothing Charlie Chaplin ever did is so funny as the sight of a Scots detective trying to hit the base of his own skull with a loaded rubber cosh. Man, ye’re a grand sicht!

If Macdonald had spoke aloud the thought in his mind, he would have said: “What a perfectly loathsome pair you seem to have been.

the man was real—and the man was dead, still and inscrutable, having taken his secrets with him into the cold flood of London’s river.

You might give my department a call, and tell them I shall be at the hospital. We seem to be having a busy evening. Explosion, fire, assault, and the chief actor fished out of the river too late for him to be helpful.

A good type of head, the face already settled into the half-smiling lines of death, waxen, untroubled, inscrutable.

Our researches unearthed the appalling fact that he is a Jew. His father’s name was originally Levi. Mrs. Attleton, it appears, loathes Jews, and Thomas knew it. He was willing to spend several more nights in his unpleasing cell rather than own up to his race.

Are you dippy, and all that sort of thing? Bats in the belfry—what? My word!” Marlowe stepped nearer to him and spoke in a lower voice. “Suppose, Mr. Warwick,

Bruce Attleton mixed himself a whisky and soda calculated to reduce funereal impressions to a minimum, and

The two men stepped out into a cold, white mist, in which all sound seemed to be muffled, as is the curious paradox of fogs. In actual fact the silence was due to the slowing down of the traffic.

I think Sybilla wanted to get a divorce from Bruce—and he wouldn’t agree. Holy deadlock—and all that.

Gorgeous place to live! I tell you I got a fright one night. That jolly piano up there is rusted all to glory, most of the strings bust, but one of the remaining bass strings took it into its head to snap just after I’d turned the lights off. It was uncanny. First a report which sounded as loud as a pistol shot, then the quiver and hum of the string springing back, and that woke the echo of every remaining string—the dampers have all rotted to glory—and the whole thing seemed to sing. Then a cat began to howl in accompaniment and the owls woke up and hooted. Very pretty! A sort of diabolic concert.

Sucking away at his pipe, he realised that there wasn’t any glamour about a murder case in which you knew the parties involved.

If you were landed with a corpse on your hands, by what method could you dispose of it so as to avoid any future liabilities? Highest marks will be given for a method which is not only ingenious, but possesses the elements of practical common sense.